Sunday, 28 April 2013

Having taken a look at a fragment of Tangut geography a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be interesting to do something similar with Jin dynasty (1115–1234) place names written in the Jurchen script. However, although Jurchen is relatively well deciphered due to the survival of several manuscript copies of the Ming dynasty Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary, there are only a very few extant examples of Jin dynasty Jurchen inscriptions and only a handful of Jurchen manuscripts, so there aren't really any unstudied fragments of Jurchen text that I can analyse the geographical place names of. Therefore, I have decided to simply make some tables of all the Jurchen names for Jin dynasty place names that I can find in the extant sources. The vast majority of place names listed below come from two monumental inscriptions, one recording the names of successful candidates in the palace examination of 1224 (D) and one recording the names of benefactors of a Buddhist temple constructed in 1138 or 1153 (E).

Rubbing of a monument listing the names and places of residence of successful candidates in the palace examination of 1224 (Nüzhen jinshi timing bei 女真進士題名碑)

I : Inscriptions on the Pagoda of Ten Thousand Copies of the Flower Garland Sutra (萬部華嚴經塔), Hohhot, Inner Mongolia

S : Inscription on the side of an official seal

Google Map of Jurchen Places

To accompany this post I have created a map of Jin dynasty Jurchen geography on Google Maps, which shows the place names in Jurchen script if you click on the tags. I have not included any Meng'an (1,000 household) or Mouke (100 household) units as their precise locations are largely unknown.